This past weekend I spoke as part of the Poor People’s Campaign event: The Necessity of Moral Resistance in the Face of Militarism. Reverend William Barber was, of course, the main speaker, and if you are uncertain as to how war and militarism play a role in the demands of the Poor People’s Campaign or in the way war and militarism have always played an oppressive and devastating role in our society, then please listen to Reverend Barber’s sermon as he clearly and definitively explains those two things. My talk, on the effect of war on veterans, is here below, while Reverend Barber’s sermon and the comments from Phyllis Bennis are in the Youtube clip below. Wage Peace.

I received a good number of emails, as well as a couple of comments asking for references on last week’s post. I’ll summarize my response here, as well as post an email I sent to the author of an essay in Task and Purpose, a military focused blog, on the relationship of PTSD and combat veterans. That letter, which was more than 600 words and documented, was not even acknowledged, let alone responded to or published…so it goes 😉

As I noted in last week’s post I am dealing with traumatic brain injury (TBI). I also have a diagnosed neuro-cognitive disorder. For the purposes of this blog and the work I try to take part in, this is causing tremendous problems. I suffer from constant headaches, migraines and fatigues, as well as difficulty with concentration, thought and cognitive tasks. Since I published that post last Tuesday, today is the first day, the Tuesday before last, it’s now taken me more than ten days to have had the mental clarity, ability and energy to work on my computer, write and finish this post. I’ve had at least six migraines, lasting from four to sixteen hours, and the constant headaches and fog in my head have kept me just not off my computer, but away from reading books, essays and articles, as well as watching movies, documentaries and tv shows, walking my dogs and spending time with my partner. It should be noted that these cognitive and migraine problems can also be related to PTSD, depression, and alcohol abuse, but my doctors, both in NC and now here in DC, believe it to be rooted in brain injury. Most likely I believe this brain injury comes from the hundreds of explosive blasts I was exposed to during my time in the Marines, both in training and in Iraq, and as a government official in Iraq – live by the sword, die by sword. This type of brain injury may be similar to what football players and boxers experience later in life. I say all of this to explain why I have not responded sooner to requests for more information, as well as why I am not generally traveling, writing, commenting, appearing on media, etc these days.

However, back to the post from last week: When I speak of guilt, I am speaking of the guilt that comes from being ashamed of one’s actions, whether one engaged directly or indirectly in those actions, or whether one was trying to act morally as individual in otherwise immoral circumstances; eg. an individual takes part in the Iraq War, acts in a manner that an outsider would regard as moral, but because he/she has taken part in an event with ill aims and purposes he/she assumes a greater responsibility and role and feels as if he/she has transgressed his/her own morality. This form of guilt is known as moral injury and is becoming well understood to be one of the three signature invisible wounds of war alongside PTSD and TBI.

While different than PTSD and TBI, moral injury often co-exists and overlaps with either one or both. Often moral injury/guilt, PTSD and TBI reinforce and exacerbate one another and where one wound ends another may begin. However, it is important to remember that although the three wounds manifest symptoms in the same manner and are often closely linked, moral injury/guilt, PTSD and TBI are different from one another in their causes and treatment. Simply put PTSD is the body and mind’s reaction to a traumatic or series of traumatic events, TBI is actual damage done to the brain as the result of an external force, whether it be a physical blow or explosion, and moral injury/guilt is a psychological wound caused by the betrayal of an individual’s own values, ethics, morality etc. For further definitions please see here for PTSD, here for TBI and here moral injury/guilt.

With regards to guilt and moral injury, many people recognize that it can take the form of guilt that is widely known as survivor’s guilt. This is the guilt one feels from being left alive or unhurt when others were killed or injured. In veterans survivor’s guilt can be very pronounced as those that are killed or wounded are often friends or subordinates for whom the service member feels a parental like responsibility. I dealt with this in a very awful manner from a helicopter accident that I survived in 2006, but from which four others did not, including a man I consider a friend. In this case, my guilt was not because I solely survived and they died, but because I did not save them. This aspect, of not doing more to help or save others, is also seen often in veterans, as young men and women are recruited into the military and then conditioned to see themselves as heroes in the waiting.

There is another aspect of guilt and moral injury that comes with combat veterans and this is the guilt that comes from taking part in killing. Studies tell us the guilt that comes from this killing can come from either directly or indirectly taking part in the killing, e.g. you don’t have to have been the one who pulled the trigger, and that this guilt can come from not just the killing of civilians and innocents, but also from killing the “enemy”. This guilt over killing the enemy is particularly understandable if the veteran recognizes the enemy as human and as someone who is simply fighting occupation, ie. acting justly, such as the Afghans, Iraqis and Vietnamese fighting against occupation. In this enemy they recognize actions they would do themselves if the situation was reversed. For example, I used to say of the 153 Marines and Sailors I commanded in Iraq in 2006, that if they were young sunni males living in Anbar Province, 51 would be fighting us, 51 would be in Abu Ghraib and 51 would be dead. It is not a very long or difficult path for many veterans to reach this empathy for the enemy, particularly once they leave the bubble and cocoon of group-think that dominates military life and they are able to freely and independently examine both the micro and macro aspects of the war in which they took part.

In the video I shared last week, when I spoke of veterans killing themselves from guilt, I was referring to this guilt or moral injury: that of taking part in something criminal, unjust, and wrong and/or of having done something that violated spiritual, religious, professional or self-held values, principles, beliefs, etc. See the video I posted above for description of how the US Armed Forces mentally condition young men and women to see themselves as heroes and then what happens when they realize they are more a pawn or villain than a hero. For many this is the crux of moral injury and it is a soul crushing and existential crisis that I believe leads to a great many suicides.

In my case, my personal foundation, my very essence and being was ripped from me; to say my world was turned upside down is not just a minimalist description, but a trite one, as the experience, lasting years and managed now because of the great help of psychologists at the VA Medical Center in Durham, reached such depths as are only encountered in the most intense spiritual or awakened moments. Coupled with traumatic brain injury, depression, PTSD and alcohol abuse, it is easy to understand how with no ability to make amends and the constant hero worship of the American public this guilt could only be assuaged with thoughts of suicide. As my life crumbled and I believed in nothing, I was already an atheist, believing neither in the gods of Abraham or deism, despair and despondency became exaggerated and resounded in my head and soul with every little failure and misstep. Alcohol self medicated me for awhile, but the only escape from the sheer distress at the very base of my being was to end it.

Guilt driving someone to suicide should not be a striking idea, it is common in the literature and religion that we are first introduced to as children and teenagers: think of Judas in the Gospels or Lady Macbeth shouting: “Out, out damn spot!”. Guilt, however, has not been something men and women returning home from war have traditionally been screened for or asked about, more than likely I believe as any guilt associated and announced with the wars of the United States is politically and patriotically unacceptable (in that spirit RootsAction and myself received several angry and righteous emails denouncing the linking of suicide in veterans to feeling guilty about what they took part in during the war or killing the enemy).

As mentioned above, I will paste a letter I sent to the military blog Task and Purpose, but first I would like to list a number of references I use to support my conclusions that it is guilt that is the chief driver of suicides in combat veterans. Additionally, I have a pdf that contains links and abstracts to 25 separate studies that exam the relationship of guilt/moral injury, TBI, and PTSD to suicide in veterans. Please send me an email at matthew_hoh@riseup.net if you would like a pdf copy of that.

For information on suicide rates of veterans with PTSD compared to other mental health populations, please see Figure 3, page 9 in the report.

For information on suicide rates for veterans, broken out by age group and sex and compared to the US population, see Table 4, page 18

For information on suicide rate of Iraq and Afghan war veterans see Table 5, page 19 and Figure 22, page 33. By comparing these tables and utilizing the information available from the CDC in figure 2 of its suicide data on the general US population, you’ll see for example that the youngest male veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars have suicide rates nearly 6 times that of other young men their age. By looking at other tables and figures in the suicide report and comparing them to the rate of civilian suicides you’ll note that veterans in the age groups where the United States was in major and lengthy wars (WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan) have significantly higher rates of suicide than non-veterans. During periods of time when the United States was not in these large wars veteran suicide rates are on par or below civilian suicide rates.

Of course, being in war doesn’t mean that a service member sees combat or takes part in the killing experience that may lead him/her to later take their own life. However, there have been a number of studies that have shown that veterans who have been in combat have a higher rate of suicide than veterans who have also deployed to war but not seen combat (and incidentally, despite common perception, Iraq and Afghan veterans have been more likely to be in combat than veterans of any previous war, see my letter below to Task and Purpose).

The linking of combat and suicide has also been reported through journalism, such as this NY Times story which tracked a battalion of infantry Marines after their return home and to civilian life after their time in Afghanistan. At the time of the reporting, this unit of approximately 1,000 men who had been engaged in heavy fighting in Helmand Province, had a suicide rate 14 times higher than their civilian male counter-parts. As I know Marines who were in this unit, nothing makes me suspect that the rate of suicide has lessened for these men. Another news story detailed how WWII veterans kill themselves at 4 times the rate of non-veterans of the same age, which demolishes the myth that such a problem with mental health and suicidality didn’t exist for previous generations of war veterans or goes away with time and age. From the Washington Post linked in the previous sentence:

The reality was that of the 16 million Americans who served in the armed forces during World War II, fewer than half saw combat. Of those who did, more than 1 million were discharged for combat-related neuroses, according to military statistics. In the summer of 1945, Newsweek reported that “10,000 returning veterans per month . . . develop some kind of psychoneurotic disorder. Last year there were more than 300,000 of them — and with fewer than 3,000 American psychiatrists and only 30 VA neuropsychiatric hospitals to attend to their painful needs.”

One of those hospitals was the subject of John Huston’s 1946 documentary, “Let There Be Light,” which said that “20% of all battle casualties in the American Army during World War II were of a neuropsychiatric nature.” The film followed the treatment, mostly with talk therapy, drugs and hypnosis, of “men who tremble, men who cannot sleep, men with pains that are no less real because they are of a mental origin.” Huston’s movie was confiscated by the Army just minutes before its premiere in 1946 and was not allowed to be shown in public until 1981. The government rationale at the time was protecting the privacy of the soldiers depicted, though Huston maintained all had signed waivers..

and

“Most of the World War II men that I worked with came to me in their 70s or 80s, after retirement or the death of a spouse,” said Joan Cook, a professor of psychiatry at Yale and a PTSD researcher for Veterans Affairs. “Their symptoms seemed to be increasing, and those events seemed to act as a floodgate.”

For so many veterans, that was when they finally learned they were not crazy or weak. “Pretty much to a person, for them, learning about PTSD and understanding that people were researching it in World War II veterans was a real relief,” Schnurr said. “Many people felt isolated and crazy, and they thought it was just them. And they didn’t talk about it.”

“Across all suicide-related outcomes (i.e., suicide ideation, suicide attempt, and death by suicide), the relation of specific combat exposure with suicide-related out- comes was twice as large (r = .12) as the relation of general deployment across all suicide-related outcomes” and

“the difference between the relation of combat-specific experience and general deployment history with suicide- related outcomes was significant”.

The report goes on to say that being involved in combat increases the likelihood of suicide in veterans by 43%.

In the video from RootsAction I mention that as early as 1991 researchers had determined combat related guilt to be the most significant predictor of suicide in Vietnam veterans. That study can be found here. Its conclusion reads: “In this study, PTSD among Vietnam combat veterans emerged as a psychiatric disorder with considerable risk for suicide, and intensive combat-related guilt was found to be the most significant explanatory factor. These findings point to the need for greater clinical attention to the role of guilt in the evaluation and treatment of suicidal veterans with PTSD.”

Take note that the current checklist for screening veterans at the VA does not include specific questions about or references to guilt and a 2012 VA study noted:“Killing experiences are NOT routinely examined when assessing suicide risk. Our findings have important implications for conducting suicide risk assessments in veterans of war.” (emphasis mine)

As mentioned above I have links, citations and abstracts for 25 studies I have reviewed that are available online, primarily through NIH, that explore the connection of suicide, combat, guilt, PTSD and TBI. As it it 12 pages long I will not paste it here, but if you would like a PDF, please let me know by comment or by email (matthew_hoh@riseup.net).

As I noted in my original post last week, there is also a very real connection between TBI and suicides, and with so many Iraq and Afghan veterans living now with TBI many of the suicides that are occurring would likely be connected to TBI. More information on TBI and veterans is found in the letter below.

Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

Peace to you.

Matt

Below is a letter I sent to the military blog Task and Purpose, which went unacknowledged, regarding many of the common misperceptions of PTSD and veterans.

Thank you for your recent article on PTSD and the effects of transition on veterans. I believe the broad outlines of the study and its conclusions are correct. It reminds me of what I heard said about American soldiers returning from WWI: “how are you going to keep them on the farm when they have seen Paris?” There are a few things that the study’s authors, however, did not take into account and that can lead to misunderstanding about veterans by the public, particular the effects of combat.

First, the study’s authors do not differentiate between the veteran population as a whole, those who deployed, and those who saw combat. This is crucial for understanding the stresses and challenges veterans face and why they face them. For example, a meta-study from the National Center for PTSD by Brett Litz and William Schlenger, examined 14 published PTSD studies of Afghan and Iraq war veterans, and found that troops who had seen combat had PTSD rates of 10-18% but for troops that had not seen combat the rate was only 1.5%. An important differentiation.

The authors also do not make the correlation or connection to the symptoms that they identify in veterans due to transition stress to the same symptoms that occur in unemployed civilians. There is a vast body of literature on unemployment related symptoms that has come out of the Great Recession, particularly in men. These symptoms include depression, anger, listlessness/apathy, mood impairment, sexual dysfunction, relationship problems and other issues that are similar to the symptoms that veterans experience upon separating from the military.

Secondly, the authors do not discuss the role of TBI in OIF/OEF veterans. Rates of TBI among all OIF/OEF era veterans range from 10-20% according to the VA. The Rand Corporation and the Congressional

Research Service put the rate as high as 23%. So, more OIF/OEF veterans suffer from TBI than PTSD, and as you most likely know, TBI can have a latent development and is often under reported (as is PTSD).

“The soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are having a very unique experience both because they have very good body armor now and because of the way in which insurgents use a lot of explosives. The soldiers are exposed to a lot of explosions, so they get hit over and over again, but they’re protected from all but the worst cases of secondary and tertiary effects. Whereas had it been the Vietnam War, for example, they [the soldiers] would have been much more grievously injured and would have been evacuated.”

And the study’s co-author said this:

“Probably the only war that is comparable to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is World War I, the trench and artillery warfare. The term “shell shock” came from that war and that really refers to the effects of these post-concussive symptoms.

In the group of veteran participants in this study, the average number of blast exposures that were severe enough to cause acute symptoms consistent with the diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury was 20. It was more common to have been exposed to between 50 to 100 blasts than to have a single one.”

That leads to my third point, which I think would make an excellent article for you. The notion as advanced terribly by Sebastian Junger that these wars have been safer is demonstrably false and there is no evidence to demonstrate such, rather OIF/OEF (not just combat arms but all veterans) have had higher exposure rates to combat, violence, death and injury than any previous generation of veterans. Looking at a broad range of studies and surveys we see that OIF and OEF veterans experience combat at rates of 50% or higher, again a higher rate than any previous generation of American veterans.

I have pasted below summaries I have written from various studies on OIF/OEF combat exposure, please note that some of the studies, such as the last study I reference, include veterans who did not deploy, so the rate of combat exposure is much higher than stated for deployed veterans:

Studies and surveys have shown that veterans from OIF and OEF have experienced greater or equal rates of combat/trauma exposure of veterans of other wars. For example, the 2010 National Veterans Survey reported that the overall veteran population has experienced combat at a rate of 34%. However, among veterans who deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq 63% of veterans had combat exposure. For veterans who went to war zones prior to WWII the rate was 55.4%, for those who went to war zones during WWII it was 44.9%, in Korea it was 26%, in Vietnam it was 44% and in the Gulf War it was 41%. That information comes from a study done by Ryan Edwards of Queens College, City University of New York in 2014.

Additional sources debunking Junger’s and others unsupported and undocumented notion that only 10% of American troops saw combat or experienced danger/trauma in Afghanistan and Iraq, include:

–a 2004 study by Walter Reed Army Institute of Research that found 77-87% of American troops discharged their weapons in Iraq and more than 90% reported coming under small arms fire

–a 2009 study from the Rand Corporation, by the same authors from aRand study that Junger cites in his book, reports that only 10-15% of Afghan and Iraq veterans report no combat trauma experienced at all during deployment and close to 75% report multiple exposures to combat trauma

–a 2011 study from the National Center for Veterans’ Studies at the University of Utah reported 58-60% of Afghan and Iraq veterans had experienced combat

–a 2014 study published by the British Journal of Psychiatry found that contrary to Junger’s claims on p87 of his book that British troops had half the rate of PTSD than the American troops that “were in combat with them”, both British and American troops that experienced comparable levels of combat exposure had comparable rates of PTSD. The authors of the 2004 Walter Reed report referenced above also shared this finding. In the 2014 study of the American veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq nearly 70% reported receiving small arms fire; 85% experienced artillery, rocket or mortar fire; 43% handled human remains; 62% experienced dead/injured US forces; 24% had a friend injured near them; 28% gave aid to the wounded; 42% experienced sniper fire; 50% cleared and searched buildings; 51% experienced hostile civilians; and 45% reported a threatening situation to which they could not respond

–a 2014 survey of studies by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry found that among veterans and service-members the greatest predictors of PTSD were high combat exposure rates and sexual abuse as an adult, and not events that occurred prior to service in the military as is often alleged. This is confirmed by many other studies, including a study by the VA from 1991 that found the best predictor of suicide in Vietnam veterans was combat related guilt.

–a 2016 study by Texas Tech University of student service–members and veterans found that 44% of those surveyed had experienced combat. This study included veterans and active duty/reserve service members, both those that deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq and those that did not.

Suicide is another factor the authors do not address. According to the VA, among the youngest male veterans of OIF/OEF, ages 18-29, the suicide rate is almost 6x higher for them than for their civilian male peers. For veterans in their 30s it is 3-4x higher. Among combat units that have been tracked the suicide rate is as high as 14x that of their civilian peers. This high and exaggerated rate of suicide holds true for all generations of American veterans who served during a war era. WWII veterans have a rate 4x higher than their non veteran peers. The link between combat and suicide is undeniable and has been well documented (a meta-study by the National Center for Veterans Studies in 2015 found a significant and clear link between combat and suicide in 21 of 22 studies examined). For veterans who did not serve in a war era, the rate of suicide is comparable or less than the civilian peer population. Veteran suicide is very troubling and not something to be disregarded when talking about veterans issues, particularly mental health.

One final note, and thank you for indulging this long correspondence, but the source in the study you write about, that cites less than a 10% PTSD rate in veterans comes from a survey of 700 Danish soldiers. The Danes faced very hard fighting in Helmand, at one point I believe they had the most casualties per capita of the nations in ISAF (they had one deployed battalion on infantry), but I think it is disingenuous and unwise of the study’s authors to use a study of Danish troops, to make a broad statement about American veterans.

For your reference, I was a Marine combat engineer officer for ten years. I have PTSD, TBI and neuro-cognitive disorder diagnosis from my time at war.

Let me know if you’d like more information. Again, thank you for indulging this long email (I thought this a better format than leaving a comment), and please consider writing an article on the documented level of combat in OIF and OEF veterans to dispel the myth that only 10% see combat, that these wars were safe, OIF/OEF vets had it easy, etc.

“There is no forgiveness in this loudly and righteously proclaimed Christian nation, only the scapegoating of a young man and his family for the failures of immoral and unwinnable wars.”

Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl’s guilty plea begins the end of this phase of an embarrassing, sad and morally absurd saga of American history. Sergeant Bergdahl, who was dismissed from the Coast Guard because of mental illness, recruited into the Army in spite of such issues, and then sent to the frontlines of Afghanistan where he walked away from his base and was captured, kept as a prisoner, and tortured by the Taliban for nearly five years, has been offered almost no compassion, sympathy or forgiveness by large swaths of the American public, political classes, veterans and the media.

The shameful blood-crazed calls for vengeance against Sergeant Bergdahl, screamed across Fox News, talk radio and Twitter, by millions of Right Wing Americans have begun again today with Sergeant Bergdahl’s guilty plea. Despite an army investigation finding no Americans were killed by Sergeant Bergdahl’s departure of his unit; despite the Pentagon admitting it was known that Sergeant Bergdahl was in Pakistan within a few days of his capture, thus negating the validity of the Right Wing talking points of continuous search missions for Sergeant Bergdahl that jeopardized American lives; despite the general who led the investigation of Sergeant Bergdahl’s disappearance stating Sergeant Bergdahl should not be punished and the colonel who led the Army’s version of a grand jury trial recommending the same; despite the United States military’s top prisoner of war expert testifying that Sergeant Bergdahl endured more torture at the hands of the Taliban than any American prisoner of war has endured since the Vietnam War, undoubtedly due to his multiple escape attempts and unwillingness to cooperate with his kidnappers; and despite repeated calls made by President Trump for Sergeant Bergdahl to be executed, as well as calls for retaliation against the military if Sergeant Bergdahl is not sent to jail by Senator John McCain, clear and blatant forms of wrongful and illegal command influence prohibited by military law against a defendant, Sergeant Bergdahl finds himself today having entered a guilty plea and putting himself at the mercy of a US Army judge.

In time, Sergeant Bergdahl may become just a footnote to America’s wars in the Muslim world, wars that have killed well over a million people since 2001, but his individual story relays the fundamental truths of these American wars against Sunnis and Shias, and Arabs, Africans and Pashtuns, (nearly all the people we have killed, maimed and made homeless have been Muslim and dark skinned) that there is no logic to our violence, only the unending and insatiable requirement for more war and more destruction, and there is no forgiveness in this loudly and righteously proclaimed Christian nation, only the scapegoating of a young man and his family for the failures of immoral and unwinnable wars on the murderous altar of the twin godheads of American Exceptionalism and White Supremacy. Sergeant Berghdal’s story does not just inform us of the madness of our wars overseas, but highlights our wars here at home; for our wars abroad come from the same root causes as our wars at home.

It was Sergeant Bergdahl’s parents standing outside the White House with President Obama that began the rage against him and his family. This was the treason that so angered and upset the white conservative audiences of Megyn Kelly and Rush Limbaugh. Sergeant Bergdahl’s white parents standing at the White House with that black president and thanking him for freeing their son began the scorn, the vitriol and the outrage against Sergeant Bergdahl, his mother and his father. The audacity of Jani and Bob Bergdahl, released themselves from the captivity of the unimaginable nightmare of the imprisonment and torture of their son for five years by the Taliban, to stand with Barack Hussein Obama and to give him thanks was a betrayal to the usurped, rightful and white structures that underlie so many white Americans understanding of United States history and society.

The grand mythology of American militarism, a key pillar of both American Exceptionalism and White Supremacy, does not allow for figures such as Sergeant Bergdahl. The greatest military in the history of the world is a required statement of faith for all American politicians and public persons, even though the American military has not achieved victory in war in over seventy years, so an explanation of collusion and cooperation with anti-American and anti-white forces is necessary to provide the causation of such an undermining. Of course, once Bob and Jani Bergdahl stood with President Obama, the racially fueled reactionary political anger appeared in Facebook posts and twitter rants and the lies needed to sustain that anger and turn it into a useful political tool arrived: Sergeant Bergdahl attempted to join the Taliban, Sergeant Bergdahl gave information to the enemy, Sergeant Bergdahl got Americans killed, Sergeant Bergdahl had anti-American beliefs, Sergeant Bergdahl’s father is a Muslim…all claims that were untrue and disproved over time, but such a straightening of facts is almost always inconsequential to those whose identity is an abominable mix of race, right wing politics and nationalism. People of such a type as those who believe Jesus is ok with them carrying handguns into church, demand that Santa Claus can only be white, and that the Confederate flag is a symbol of a proud heritage, have little time or consideration for the particulars of anything that triggers the base tribalism that dominates and informs their lives.

The fundamental aspects of Sergeant Bergdahl’s disappearance were well known and documented years prior to that White House announcement of his release. Veterans organizations called for his rescue and return at rallies and Republican senators enacted legislation to help release him . “Bring Him Home” and “No Man Left Behind” were echoed repeatedly by Republican politicians and pundits, and even Ronald Reagan’s most famed acolyte and Fox News hero, Oliver North, wore a Bowe Bergdahl POW bracelet. However, to be white and to stand tearfully and gratefully alongside that black president is unconscionable and unforgivable to many “true Americans” and so the parents’ sins became the son’s and Sergeant Bergdahl’s treason was a dog whistle to those who believe anti-whiteness and anti-Americanism are inseparable.

For the man who used race so overtly and effectively to become President of the United States, calling during his campaign for a traitor like Sergeant Bergdahl to face the firing squad, or be thrown out of a plane without a parachute, was a rudimentary requirement in order to Make America Great Again. Even General James Mattis, who hung outside his office a horseshoe that had belonged to Sergeant Bergdahl and had been given to the general by the sergeant’s father, understands the political importance of Bergdahl’s treason. General Mattis who previously had supported the soldier and given great comfort to the family, now, as Secretary of Defense, is silent. I believe Secretary Mattis to have higher ambitions than simply running the Pentagon and keeping that white base of support in his favor is not anything such a savvy and cunning careerist, such as James Mattis, would imperil.

We will soon know what, if any punishment Sergeant Bergdahl is to receive. Hopefully, he and his family will be spared further pain and they can begin rebuilding lives that were shattered by the unending war in Afghanistan and then shattered again by the race-fueled partisan politics of the unending war against people of color in the United States. For Bowe Bergdahl, a young man who never should have been inducted into the Army to begin with, his suffering is testament to the viciousness, callousness and hate that dominates American actions both at home and abroad. We deserve no forgiveness for what has been done, and may still be done, to him and his family.

From a talk I gave to the Licensed Professional Counselors Association of North Carolina in October on my own issues with PTSD, depression, moral injury, alcohol abuse and suicidality. Please feel free to share this video with others. Other men and women sharing their stories with me has helped in my recovery and I want to do my part and pass that kind of assistance along.

Prior to giving this talk, as I was driving to the conference and walking into the venue, I planned on drinking as soon as I was done. Not just a few beers to watch my Mets play the Dodgers in the playoffs, but a medicinal drowning and extinguishment of that all too familiar, exhausting and debilitating anguish in my head, heart and soul. When I was finished with my talk, although tired, the plan was still there. I drove to a bar, got out of my car, and walked to the bar door. My desire, at that moment, not to be a liar was stronger than my need to drink, and I got back in my car and drove home.

From watching the video I doubt you can tell the pain I was in during this talk, an emotional, existential pain, unlike any known physical pain, and a sort of pain that seems to have no hope or end to it. It is as if a wedge or filter is placed into my head, not allowing me to access the functional, rational, more evolutionary modern parts of my brain. I am living in the poisonous fog that William Styron so masterfully articulated in his Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness; a book that I can’t recommend enough to help friends and family understand how such mental pain and torment seems inescapable and unending, and drives otherwise very strong men and women to levels of despair that self-euthanizing becomes, in that ill and pained mind, a prudent, practical and necessary option.

My greatest gratitude to my good friend John Shuford who organized this talk and provided me with the video. I hope, in the future, to provide more information on an initiative John is working on to provide greater clinical training to therapists assisting veterans with combat related issues of PTSD, moral injury, depression, alcohol abuse and suicidality.

[Note: The introduction to the video gives a bit of a distorted summary of my career. You can find a professional biography on the About Me page of this blog. Not that it really matters though, as Babe Ruth said: “yesterday’s home runs don’t win today’s ball games”]

Back in March, Quaker House in Fayetteville, NC, the home of America’s largest military base, Fort Bragg, hosted me to discuss my recovery from PTSD and moral injury. The full video is below, along with a three minute clip that Lynn Newsom, the co-director of the Fayetteville Quaker House, is using in the talks she gives to military and non-military audiences on moral injury.

During my talk I am not very clear about the correlation, and, yes, I would also say causation, between combat and suicide. However, there is a very clear link between combat veterans and suicide, a link that is obviously very dangerous to cherished American myths of war, with all too familiar, prevalent and false motifs of justice, honor and redemption. To illustrate the connection between war, violence and suicide, a connection that manifests in veterans through PTSD, depression, substance abuse, and moral injury, I have included, at the end of this essay, 15 fairly easy to find studies of the last few decades documenting the prevalence of suicide in combat veterans.

Among the below studies, and among the most recent, dealing with my fellow veterans of the Afghan and Iraq Wars, researchers at the National Center for Veterans Studies have found that veterans who were exposed to killing and atrocity had a 43% greater risk of suicide, while 70% of those Afghan and Iraq veterans who participated in heavy combat had attempted suicide. We spends millions of dollars and thousands of hours to physically, mentally and morally condition each young man and woman who volunteers to serve in the military to travel abroad and kill, but upon their return, in reality, effective and thorough programs to decondition our veterans, help them reenter and reintegrate into society and regain emotional, moral and spiritual balance and health are nonexistent, while care for developed wounds, both physical and mental is underfunded. Continue reading →

Healing a Wounded Sense of Morality
Many veterans are suffering from a condition similar to, but distinct from, PTSD: moral injury, in which the ethical transgressions of war can leave service members traumatized.

MAGGIE PUNIEWSKA JUL 3, 2015

Amy Amidon has listened to war stories on a daily basis for almost a decade.

As a clinical psychologist at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, she works with a multi-week residential program called OASIS, or Overcoming Adversity and Stress Injury Support, for soldiers who have recently returned from deployments. Grief and fear dominate the majority of the conversations in OASIS: Amidon regularly hears participants talk about improvised explosive devices claiming the lives of close friends; about flashbacks of airstrikes pounding cities to rubble; about days spent in 120-degree desert heat, playing hide and seek with a Taliban enemy. Many veterans in the program are there seeking treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

But many of Amidon’s patients talk about another kind of trauma, a psychic bruise that, unlike PTSD, isn’t rooted in fear. Some of these soldiers describe experiences in which they, or someone close to them, violated their moral code: hurting a civilian who turned out to be unarmed, shooting at a child wearing explosives, or losing trust in a commander who became more concerned with collecting decorative pins than protecting the safety of his troops. Others, she says, are haunted by their own inaction, traumatized by something they witnessed and failed to prevent. In 2012, when the first wave of veterans was returning from the Middle East, these types of experiences were so prevalent at OASIS that “the patients asked for a separate group where they could talk about the heavier stuff, the guilt stuff,” Amidon says. In January 2013, the center created individual and group therapy opportunities specifically for soldiers to talk about the wartime situations that they felt went against their sense of right and wrong. (Rules of engagement are often an ineffective guide through these gray areas: A 2008 survey of soldiers deployed at the beginning of the conflict in Iraq found that nearly 30 percent of the soldiers in each group encountered ethical situations in which they were unsure how to respond.)

Experts have begun to refer to this specific type of psychological trauma as moral injury. “These morally ambiguous situations continue to bother you, weeks, months, or years after they happened,” says Shira Maguen, the mental-health director of the OEF/OIF Integrated Care Clinic at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center and one of the first researchers to study the concept. Examples of situations that might precipitate moral injury are betrayals by those in leadership roles, within-rank violence, inability to prevent death or suffering, and hurting civilians. Sometimes it co-exists with PTSD, but moral injury is its own separate trauma with symptoms that can include feelings of shame, guilt, betrayal, regret, anxiety, anger, self-loathing, and self-harm. Last year, a study published in Traumatology found that military personnel who felt conflicted about the “rightness” or “wrongness” of a combat situation were at an increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behavior afterwards, compared with their peers who didn’t have that same sense of ambiguity. The main difference between the two combat-induced traumas is that moral injury is not about the loss of safety, but the loss of trust—in oneself, in others, in the military, and sometimes in the nation as a whole.Continue reading →

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Some Photos To Show How I Got Here (Nov. 2015)

I see this and I wait for King Kong to come out of the mists. But he’s a myth. Don’t let myths define you, don’t let outdated and irrelevant stories propel you, take your life and be your own reality.

With Kevin Lucy and Ray McGovern in NYC in May 2015. Ray was career CIA, having served as George W. Bush’s personal briefer. He is my mentor. Kevin’s son Jeff was a Marine who killed himself upon returning home from Iraq. Kevin courageously and unselfishly shares his and his family’s story to strangers in order to help people heal.

Meeting with my Iraqi engineer staff in September of 2004. I know at least three of them have been killed and one maimed since I left. If they are still in Salah ad Din, they live in the battleground of the Sunni Islamic State and the Shia government/militias.

Watching the oil on the ancient Tigris River drift by in January 2005.

With Code Pink and Ray McGovern speaking against the US and NATO intervention in Libya. Spring 2011.

Yep. This is real. From the Green Zone in 2004.

My half of my trailer in Baghdad. 2004/5.

Afghan men and boys gawk at a Western woman walking through the streets of their city. Qalat, Zabul Province, Southern Afghanistan.

Election day is approaching in Qalat, Zabul Province in August, 2009. The elections were masterfully corrupt and illegitimate. It was truly brilliant and beautiful election theft. Too bad so many young American boys bled out obscenely so far from home to make that happen.

Becoming a war tax resister.

Two brothers killed by American bombs in Syria in 2014. It’s quite rare to see such testimony of our wars abroad in American media, but overseas, on networks not headquartered in New York City, viewers have a full appreciation for what the US is doing.

Speaking in Dallas in August 2011. I had promised myself this was to be my last speaking event, that I was going to leave the wars behind and start a new life. Staying with friends that night in Dallas I was unable to drink as I needed and I lay awake wracked with anxiety, anger and sorrow. The alcohol I traveled with I had finished, alone, in their guest room, the night before. The next day, on the flight home, I took advantage of a first class upgrade in order to drink the three hours back to DC. Arriving back home I met my parents and girlfriend for dinner. Strengthened by the alcohol I was confident and happy in my new life. It didn’t happen. The only thing I was successful in was leaving my work. Within months my relationship was over, breakdowns were daily and suicide was the next step. A therapist in DC saved my life.

Dinner in Qalat with the Ambassador. Summer 2009.

One of my D9 armored bull dozers at work in Iraq in 2006 or 2007. We used these to berm in cities and destroy homes. Please see: https://matthewhoh.com/2016/03/16/remembering-rachel-corrie-letters-from-palestine/

A village from the air north of Baghdad in June, 2004. We flew low and fast, which to the villagers was a loud and near constant reminder of our presence.

With Amos Lee, Raleigh, NC.

Speaking at a local Peace Action Dinner in 2013. Sober for a year I approached speaking selectively and with hesitation. At this point I was working for $7.35 at the YMCA, but I was alive.

A young girl in Qalat, Zabul Province Afghanistan. At her age she has only a few years remaining of being outside, not covered, and not escorted by a male relative. When she reaches puberty she will be shut away with the remainder of the female members of her family until she is married off to start a family of her own. If she is lucky she will be a first wife.

Debating Nate Fick of Generation Kill fame on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric in December 2009.

My first effort with my friend Danny Davis. We were rejected by about 15 newspapers before Defense News ran it. August 2010.

A statue of Salah ad Din was prominent on our base in Tikrit. Born in Tikrit in the 12th century, Salah ad Din would lead the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187. As modern day crusaders most of us aboard the base were ignorant of such history and blind to the symbolism of the great general to the Iraqi, Arab and Muslim people.

Afghan villagers endure our speeches and await our paying a family for killing their sons.

My security team at an outdoor restaurant in Sulimania, Kurdistan. Sit outside, smoke cigs, talk to people and be nice. Heading to Kurdistan, with a stop first in Kirkuk, every six weeks was like R&R.

Checking on the status of road work in southeastern Afghanistan. Summer 2009.

Ashore in Thailand in 2001.That’s Thailand’s aircraft carrier behind me. I’d bet dollars to donuts she still hasn’t put out for operations yet. But, hey, Thai admirals get to say they have an aircraft carrier…

A simple plaque to remember the presence of United States Marines in Australia at the War Shrine in Melbourne, Australia.

Speaking in NJ. Winter 2011.

One of my meetings with local Afghans. Sometimes you would get someone representing the Taliban. Their message: we are tired of fighting, but we are not going to surrender. Surrender of course being the only thing I was authorized to communicate to them. Zabul Province, Afghanistan, September 2009.

The sandbags of the embassy compound in Baghdad. 2004/5

You know, things are often right outside your door that you don’t take the time to notice.

Boys and girls perform for Paul Bremer, CPA staff and Iraqi guests at the transitioning of the Ministry of Youth and Sport to Iraqi control. This was over eleven years ago. What happened to these children? What have they become if they have survived?

Due to my position, which really was seniority by default, because no one else showed up, I had my own bedroom with working bath. Here’s my toilet and bidet. I had a hot shower for half the year which was an unbelievable luxury compared to nearly everyone else in the country, soldier, insurgent or civilian (our hot water tank was located outside). Tikrit, Iraq, 2004/5

Sam Winstead, who fought at Peleliu and Okinawa in World War II, speaks at the Swords to Plowshares Memorial Bell Tower during Veterans Day observations in Raleigh, NC, 2014. Each year Sam rides his bike to Washington DC to speak for peace.

Day laborers I supervised one day on the grounds of the CPA compound. These men filled sandbags all day for 7 or 8 dollars a day (maybe a little more or less). I liked these men much more than I liked most of the CPA/Embassy staff. Interestingly, most of these men were Shia, however they spoke reverently of the Sunni uprising in Fallujah of April 04. Not many of us were talking to local people, or at least local people who were not on long term, well paying contracts.

Afghan war widows cleaning raisins. These were the only women allowed to work in the province. Summer 2009.

My first sergeant and I inspect a pipeline we ruptured in Barwahna, Iraq in November 2006. I still have that uniform with the oil stains.

Yes.

Just some guns my friends had in Baghdad…2004.

A view of Iraq from an open Humvee. This photo would have been from the Fall of 2004. A year and a half after the invasion we were still operating in vehicles open and exposed to enemy gunfire, rockets and IEDs, while welding our own armor onto the vehicles for protection.

That’s right.

These parakeets could be bought in the bazaar in the Green Zone, not more than a couple of blocks from the US Embassy. When suicide bombers hit the bazaar, one of them hit this store. I’ve always worried about what happened to these birds.

Che lives! On the border with Pakistan in southeastern Afghanistan a vendor sells Che Guervara stickers. I still have one. Summer 2009.

Reconstruction and governance team with PSD team leaders. Early 2005. Tikrit, Iraq.

Hugh Elsea’s wedding, Southwest Virginia near Lyhchburg, October 2012. This was the first event I ever attended as a sober person. Thankfully it was a dry wedding.

Yes, who would he torture?

One of my Huskies. You placed a Marine inside of this vehicle and he drove along the road with metal detectors under the vehicle. Its modular design allowed it to be blown to pieces without the Marine suffering visible wounds, usually. Of course, a minor design flaw was that the detector was behind the front wheels. My Marines drove these vehicles daily looking for bombs in and on the side of the roads. They never complained.

Building a better Iraq. Nothing like tempting people with the possibility of clean water for their children but then delivering a civil war onto them.

Attending the weekly Salah ad Din Provincial Council meeting in 2004 or 2005. The provincial council chairman (seated beneath the flag) would be killed not very long after I left Iraq. The man I am talking to is my friend, Khaled, the provincial head of construction, I have no idea if he is alive. In my suit pants pocket would have been my .32 Llama pistol.

The Tim Hortons at Kandahar Air Base in southern Afghanistan. This was not your grandfather’s or your father’s war. May 2009

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength. -Saint Francis de Sales

A lone Iraqi soldier stands guard as we drive by. I wonder if he is alive. 2004 or 2005, Tikrit, Iraq.

From 2004 in Iraq. By the time I left Iraq, for the last time, in the spring of 2007 such destroyed and damaged buildings were common.

My Marines train to go to Iraq. 29 Palms, CA, summer 2006. We had a lot of trouble getting enough ammunition to train, among other problems, as we prepared to deploy. Officers senior to me lied about our shortages and it took the personal intervention of the 4th Marine Division Commanding General for us to get the ammunition, equipment and facilities to be properly trained for Iraq. Semper Fi and fuck you 4th CEB.

Young men, and some young women, saw this view every day for a year. Every day. Sometimes their mission would be broken up by the vehicle in front or behind getting blown up. Sometimes it was their vehicle. Other times they would take small arms or maybe RPG fire, and, of course, kids would throw rocks at them. They didn’t speak the local language, watched as local people fled the streets when they approached, didn’t know the local history, believed Iraq was involved in 9/11, received letters and emails telling them their girlfriends and wives were leaving them, used toilets that overflowed, slept in freezing AC to keep away the mosquitos and the disease the bugs carried, and ate shitty food, but they had each other.

Nothing seems like it can be so simple, so pure, so honest or so beautiful after war. All the stories, tales and narratives don’t make sense anymore.

The banner from my appearance with Jonathan Landay on one of Bill Moyers’ last shows. September 2014

My good friend Shea. Race car driver, blues guitarist and Quaker. Our friendship began the same time as my first attempt at sobriety.

New Years Day, 2005, Tikirt, Iraq. With Suzanne, State Department, and Gail, USAID. Two of my best friends. Behind the tree is a $10,000 copy machine that worked for about a week before the dust jammed it. It was impossible to fix without a technician and Ricoh wouldn’t send one to Iraq, I called.

My cat. My pets have allowed me to renew relationships of trust as well as maintain a connection to the present. Two things that PTSD takes away from you.

With Bradley Walker at the Marine Corps Marathon in 2008. Not pictured are Brad’s two artificial legs. Brad lost his legs when the vehicle he was in hit an IED in December 2006. My vehicle had driven over that IED just seconds before Brad’s did.

Find it.

An example of a self-armored vehicle that we rode in until late in 2004. This wasn’t a vehicle I ever rode in, but it was similar to one I often rode in in Salah ad Din Province. Baghdad, Spring or Summer 2004.

In a new apartment, I conduct a Skype interview with BBC from my bedroom. Don’t let anyone tell you being an anti-war agitator is a path to financial prosperity ;) October 2013

My latest tattoo. From the Rumi poem Bewilderment, in Farsi, it reads: “I have tried prudent planning long enough. From now on I’ll be mad.”

Working for six dollars a day these young men made us look very good to the staff of the US embassy and to the politicians in Washington, DC. Progress was being made, we can attest to it because we are spending money…

Speaking against torture outside the governor’s mansion in Raleigh in 2014. North Carolina is home to an airfield utilized in the US government’s rendition and torture program. While clearly illegal, under existing local, state and federal laws, no elected or appointed official has had the courage, or political need, to enforce the law.

Afghan soldiers prepare to be inspected by the governor of Zabul Province. None of these soldiers were from the province, very few spoke Pashto and even less were Pashtun. August 2009

Young Iraqi men. How long did those smiles last after 2004?

Mona and Risahla. Mona was Shia, Risahla Kurdish. Mona treated me, every day, like her son for nearly a year. I have no idea if she is alive.

Downtown Hit, Iraq. One of the oldest cities it was a very, very tough place for the Marines and Soldiers stationed here. In every window there could be a sniper, every piece of trash could be an IED, and every person might be a suicide bomber. I have the greatest respect for our young men who lived here, for months on end, enduring that insanity. It is right to be angry at what we put them through.

Greeting Ambassador Karl Eikenberry alongside the Commander of 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. At this point I was the acting political officer for four provinces in northeastern Afghanistan. Spring 2009.

Parliament, Westminster and MI5 from RT’s London studio. November 2014.

My pills and my dog’s pills. We are quite the pair.

Combat wasn’t the only danger in Iraq. Accidents accounted for many, many American and Iraqi lives. While this incident was nothing more than a gigantic pain in the ass, such rollovers and submersions could be deadly. Heavy vehicles would collapse the farm roads, rolling over into a water filled ditched. The vehicle would sink into the mud. Encased, unable to open the vehicle doors and hatches, the crew would slowly drown to death. The other members of the patrol would be unable to dig out the vehicle and would have to wait helplessly for a recovery team while their mates died.

Our deck in Tikrit. We could eat from the date palms. Fortunately you could usually hear the outgoing fire from insurgent mortars before the rounds reached the base giving us enough time to get back inside. I will say watching incoming mortar rounds fall short and detonate on the Tigris was a bit thrilling.

My favorite dog we worked with in Anbar Province in 2006 and 2007. This was Cisco. He was very sweet and would climb in your lap. He was trained for both bomb detection and attack and was on at least his third deployment. Like many of our war dogs he suffered from PTSD. His teeth had been replaced with titanium. When a dog sinks into an arm or leg they will bite into the bone and not release. Regular teeth may break, titanium won’t. To know what we have done to these creatures in pursuit of our wars is to know what war is.

Flying to Baghdad in 2004/5. This was often very cold and loud, or very hot and loud, but much, much safer than driving back and forth on Route Tampa.

Oil floods the Tigris River in January 2005. This became more common as the year went on.

Speaking in defense of Bowe Bergdahl’s family on CNN, 2014.

Iraqi men play soccer on a pitch in Sadr City, Baghdad, May 2004.

Live in the present. It may not be Maui at Christmas, but find yourself in the present wherever you are. You owe that to those who can no longer do so themselves.

Testing suicide bomber detection devices on a very cold day in Massachusetts in January 2009. They didn’t work. That didn’t stop the vendors from complaining to Congress though.

Speaking to members of Congress in July 2010. Bob Pape of the University of Chicago is beside me.

The Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra. Revered in Shia society, al Qaeda would destroy its beautiful dome in February 2006. The civil war between Iraqis had begun well before al-Qaeda’s attack, so much that we began recording and reporting to Baghdad Iraqi civilian deaths in early 2005. That we didn’t do so for nearly two years into our war there tells a lot about us. In October 2004, Iraqi and American special operations troops stormed the mosque to root out insurgents. In doing so they destroyed the front door. We, the US, paid $100,000 to purchase a replacement. War is racket folks…

I’m on the left heading to inspect one of the berms we had built outside of Haqlaniyah, Anbar Province, Iraq, December 2006. As part of a larger campaign, Marines, Soldiers and Sailors, with Iraqi police and army units, led by Sunnis, and blessed off by local tribal leaders, began to clear the cities of the Euphrates River Valley leading to Ramadi. We constructed large berms around the cities, allowing only one way in and out. Marines and Iraqi soldiers went house to house and cleared the city. Local people gave up the al-Qaeda cells that were operating in their cities. They did that, not because they liked us, but because we had finally talked to and worked with their local leaders and limited the interference from the Shia government in Baghdad. We replaced the Shia leaders of Iraqi soldiers and police with Sunnis and Anbaris. With no need for al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) the Sunnis gave them up. What was fascinating was that the AQI cells were quite small. Violence dropped dramatically. It became so quiet it was scary. In the end it was politics that had them fighting us, simple, easy to understand grievances that our hubris, ignorance and arrogance would not previously let us consider.

One of my 7-ton trucks post IED strike. My three Marines walked away from this, but were never tested for traumatic brain injury upon returning home to the US. Upon getting home we did receive a one hour PTSD briefing from a kind person who had never been to war. We didn’t give it much mind. 2007

Ashore in Indonesia less than 20 kilometers from the equator in 2001.

Doing local news in Raleigh, NC. Local news allows you to reach audiences you wouldn’t ordinarily reach.

My Kurdish colleague’s family would host us. Here is a spread Karzan’s mom and sister made for me and my security team.

Those left behind. I was in Melbourne, Australia in 2012 to keynote an Australian national security conference. My talk to a couple hundred people was roughly well received by half those at the conference center in the Melbourne Cricket Stadium. The others, primarily from senior government, the defense industry, and those looking to join the defense industry or senior government was not so receptive. Simply put, my talk proffered the question: why is Australia jumping into the quicksand of Afghanistan (at this time the Australians were replacing the Dutch in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan).

My girl Sky. Please consider helping veterans by donating to any of the many organizations that pair veterans with rescued dogs.

An M1 Abrams crew in Salah Ad Din Province in October 2004. Note the green paint on the tank. A year and a half into the war and we still didn’t have equipment that was even the right color… During my second deployment, as a Marine, I came to greatly value the firepower of a tank.

My parents’ home in NC. As a 40 year old man I spent a year at their home, recovering and trying to get sober, completely broke and unable to work. I am lucky to have such a family, other guys aren’t. Without them I would have had to live in my car and I doubt I’d still be here today.

Sunni boys come running as we drive past. They always came running. It would scare the hell out of you because we were always capable of being attacked or hitting an IED. My stomach sinks now as my body and mind remember kids like this running towards us and being so afraid, so afraid, they would be killed.

Speaking with a local municipality engineer during post combat operations in either Samarra or Bayji, Fall 2004. I have no excuse for the sideburns. It was a tough time for us all…

An early appearance on CNN in November 2009. Prior to this my last appearance in the American press was in the Hunterdon County Democrat in 1991 for high school track.

I doubt that flag is still there.

For a long time I lost my pride in what I did as a Marine, of how my Marines behaved and performed. Through therapy I have come to put my emotions, memories and feeling in perspective, to understand what we did and how we acted, how we tried to be as moral as possible in an immoral position. I have the greatest respect and fondest memories of the majority of Marines I served with, particularly those I led. Our nation’s sins should not be ours to bear alone in our own mindful hate, anger, despair and sorrow.

FOB Danger, Tikrit, Iraq. In the hill on the left of the photo, beneath the minaret, were millennia old living spaces and caves, including an ancient pre-Mohamdian church. On the right, across the bridge, was a zoo the Baath Party had run for the wealthy and the privileged. Twice, on our patio, at night, I saw the lynx that was once caged in that zoo. This was an odd place.

Talking to peace people in NC.

In 2004 I sit next to a gentlemen who would be killed just a few days later. HIs funeral would be attacked and bombed, slaughtering family and friends mourning a good man, which he was, he was one of the few. Years later my own government would attack funerals with drones and airstrikes.

Second Lieutenant Hoh, 1998.

Stockholm, March 2011. The last day of a 17 day speaking tour through Denmark, Finland, Holland and Sweden.

A Marine gets ready for patrol. Anbar Province, Winter 2007.

A message supporting diplomacy with Iran from Spring 2015.

A view of the pool at CPA Headquarters/American embassy. Spring or Summer 2004.

A co-worker attracts attention while supervising day laborers on the CPA grounds. Spring 2004. Green Zone, Baghdad. Our women got lots of attention from local men not used to form flattering clothing.

Atop the Al Malawiya Shrine in Samarra. April 2005.

The view from a lavender farm, Maui, March 2015.

Boys in Sadr City, Iraq, Spring 2004. By the time our occupation ended, seven years later, many of these boys would, if they had survived, been part of the Mahdi Army. Note the open top Hummvee at the top of the photo.

A Marine hoists our colors over Um Qasr, Iraq the first day of the invasion in March 2003. I am seeing this from my desk at the Pentagon, upset I wasn’t taking part, afraid I was going to miss the war.

A cold and frozen day in NC in 2013. I look at this now and I see old sentiments about country, people and values frozen and dead in my own heart. Still there, still resident, but frozen and dead.

In Oslo, November 2014 with my very brave friends and heroes: John Johns, Colleen Rowley, Kirk Wiebe and Normon Solomon.

On the Pakistan border a local man tells us he has no need for any of us.

I can feel the heat, I can taste the dust, I can feel my shirt and my pants sticking to me from the sweat, I am cognizant of needing to keep drinking water and forcing myself to eat. I keep an eye on not getting ahead of my security and I have a body guard right near me. I search every Iraqi with my eyes and I wait for the sound of AK fire, the retort of an outgoing mortar, or the shock and blast of a suicide bomber. I’d rather die than lose my eyes or my balls, and I’d rather die than any of my friends around me. Sitting in Wake Forest, NC on November 19, 2015, those feelings are as genuine as they were over 11 years ago in Bayji, Iraq.

Beautiful American women visited us from time to time to tell us they were proud of us.

Camp Fuji, Japan, Winter 2001. Within the year al-Qaeda would let the US know the world had changed.

With Jesse Ventura on his television show in early 2015. I have appeared on a couple of occasions with Governor Ventura and each time I get many, many more views and comments than I do from traditional cable news media.

Downtown Qalat. A provincial capital, Qalat set on the main highway between Afghanistan’s two major highways. 14 years after the war began that highway is still not controlled by Afghan government forces. August 2009

Speaking with Chris Hayes on MSNBC the night the US launched strikes agains the Islamic State in 2014. A year later the Islamic State is only larger, stronger, and has a global presence throughout the Muslim world. In the past two weeks they have successfully inspired the mass bombings in Beirut, attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian airliner.

Everyone of us behaved like a tourist at some point. I always thought of this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMFLZuAen0k

Destruction was all around us, including the buildings you lived next to. But, I guess, you become numb or you explain it away. This building had been hit by cruise missiles and airstrikes in 2003.

We couldn’t get bulletproof glass for our guard towers, equipment to repair our jammers to protect us from IEDs, or even cold weather gear that would not catch fire if our vehicles were hit, but we sure had a lot of candy! Charlie Company, 4th Combat Engineer Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 7, Anbar Province, 2006.

The joy I felt when I took off this bracelet upon Bowe’s release was nothing compared to the revulsion at the base and petty politically motivated hatred of Americans towards Bowe and his family.

Why every American wanted to visit Kurdistan.

A palace on FOB Danger. My home for nearly a year in 2004-5.

In northern Iraq, in Sulamania, a Kurdish city and province, we could drop our body armor and rifles, and walk the streets. Among the Kurds we were seen as liberators.

Dave and Majeed. Baghdad, 2004. Majeed and his family were fortunate to have been accepted into the asylum program in the US. A civil engineer, he now drives a truck.

Raleigh NC Town Hall w/ 3 US congressional reps and 2 state reps. Betsy Crites of NC Peace Action on the right. February 2012. I was newly sober.

My friend Sean delivers the flag to his father at Sean’s brother’s funeral.

With Tomi Lauren of the One America News Network, a network created because Fox News isn’t conservative enough…Go and speak to all.

Near daily view in 2004 and 2005 as we leave the FOB.

Palace living in Baghdad.

NYU Public Theater December 2010 with Alec Baldwin and fellow veterans.

At the infamous Green Zone Disco. It was as I would imagine a disco would have been like at a Howard Johnson’s in the late 1970s. Spring 2004.

They will be here long after we leave. Learn from them.

Speaking with Ammar and Damar in Tikrit shortly before leaving Tirkit to head home to the US after a year in Iraq. Upon returning home I would work as a consultant for the State Department on Iraq policy. Within a few months of being at the State Department, I had volunteered for mobilization with the Marine Corps.

Ladies and gentlemen, Consumerism has arrived in Baghdad. Please visit the al-Rasheed to shop and get the first tastes of a gloriously provisioned Iraq.

Brian, one of our Army Corps of Engineers civilians with some cash from one of my safes. Tikrit, Iraq, 2004/5

Afghan men and soldiers dance at an Afghan Independence Day celebration. The holiday commemorated defeating the British (multiple times) and the Soviets. My British colleagues were a bit unnerved by some of the referencing to killing Brits in their speeches and songs. Note the photo of Ahmed Shah Massoud in the top left corner of the photo. The ANA truly stood for the Army of the Northern Alliance.

With my friend Leslie Cockburn at her book launch in Fall 2013. Leslie’s novel, Baghdad Solitaire, is a vivid depiction of life in Iraq under occupation. So vivid I had to stop reading it for awhile.

Without makeup on MSNBC.

Your heart might be black and dead, that’s why you need to take something into your heart to help it heal. These two do it for me.

John Fields one of my PSD team leaders outside Samarra, April 2005. A Brit and a very, very good man.

In Crystal City, Virginia, 2008/9, at the Joint IED Defeat Organization, with former Marines and soldiers, engineers, and scientists to find technologies to detect suicide bombers and IEDs buried in the ground.

A young girl watches us walk by. If she is alive, she is now a young woman, having survived a war that has seen a million dead, millions wounded and maimed, millions displaced and nearly everyone mentally and emotionally traumatized. If she is still living in that house she is either under Islamic State oppression or subject to the abuses of Shia militias.

On my wall, and maybe, at some point, on my forearm.

Sitting alongside NSA whistleblower Tom Drake at the National Press Club in Washington, DC in 2013.

With one of my PSD teams above Sulimania, Kurdistan, Iraq.

Needless to say I root for the apes in the Planet of the Apes movies…

Men under my employ and pay work in Salah ad Din province in 2004. I ran a program with money from the Development Fund for Iraq, money that came from seized Iraqi assets, oil revenue and the UN oil for food program. The program was $50 million dollars and I received no written instructions as to its operation. When we needed more cash we would fly down to Baghdad and fill a duffel bag, or two, with cash from the vault. You can get $6 million dollars in a standard military duffel/sea bag. We would then fly back to Tikrit and put the money in two safes I kept in my bedroom. We would pay our contractors directly, while involving the local Iraqi government and ministries. Because we had no written instructions the program was fungible and we utilized the cash to employ public servants and conduct emergency post-battle reconstruction. I provided copies of my records to both contracting and financing officers in Kirkuk and Baghdad, as well as kept hard and digital copies in Tikrit I actually received special recognition for our work by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. It didn’t matter, we didn’t understand the politics of the war or the reality of being occupiers. And, of course, all the records were mysteriously lost as time went on. War is a racket.

Two of my NCOs grill for their Marines in between missions and patrols. I was blessed, company wide, with tough, smart and dependable corporals and sergeants. They kept their Marines alive. Rahwah, Anbar Province, Iraq, 2006/7

As the year went on we needed to add more blast protection to our house. Tikrit, Iraq, 2005

Ashore in Jakarta with Indonesian Marines in 2001.

Kurdistan. History matters.

With Andy, one of my platoon commanders. Haditha, Iraq, December 2006.

Saint Patrick’s Day 2010. I would wake up on my floor the next day, clean my self up and go and brief the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Ike Skelton. After briefing him, Chairman Skelton told me I was the first person to have ever come into his office and tell him things weren’t going well in Afghanistan. This was 2010.

My friend Dave stands next to one of the structurally decapitated heads of Saddam Hussein. Baghdad, Spring 2004.

When your mom has a crush on Chris Coumo you give him a hug and get a photo. Summer 2014

Off they go. They will arrive in a village with their guns and maybe some money, and then they will leave. They will do this for an entire deployment. Lagham Province, Afghanistan, 2009

There is a lot to fight for at home. There is really no reason to go abroad looking for monsters. We have too many here.

Mazin. Spring 2005. I still have the prayer beads you gave me my friend.

Members of the Ministry of Youth and Sport in Baghdad May 2004. Nada was one of our Iraqi employees. As I understand she is safe in the United States. Worrying what became of her haunted me for years. The gentleman to my right, Dave, was an executive with Nike who volunteered his time from home and family to try and do something good in Iraq. The gentleman to Nada’s left, Lynn, was an Army chaplain. A kinder, wiser and more gentle man I’m not sure I ever knew. RIP Lynn.

Speaking at the venerable Cleveland Club in the summer of 2011. I’m sweating out last night’s booze, beginning to feel needy for alcohol, and calculating how soon I can be at the airport in order to maximize time in the bar.

My favorite statue in Washington DC. Think big thoughts but remember it all may be absurd.

A joint Iraqi-US reconstruction team meeting. Anyone who tells you we weren’t doing counter-insurgency prior to General Petraeus’ assumption of command in Iraq in 2007 simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. Here we were utilizing millions and millions of dollars in American resources and money in collaboration with Iraq institutions, norms and personnel. Yet, every week, the insurgency grew stronger. A well financed and charitable occupation is still an occupation.

T walls and concertina lined the roads in the Green Zone (GZ). I was first stationed in Baghdad in spring 2004 before moving north to Tikrit, but I returned to the embassy roughly every 6 weeks. Each time I returned to the GZ more fortifications, barricades and obstacles had been constructed. Yet, inside the Embassy, assessments of Iraq were rosy…

Viva La Papa.

Always nice when one of your former Marines, who had a rough go of it on several occasions in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has a child. Semper Fidelis Ethan.

Laborers employed under my public works program. Monthly I would disperse tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to Iraqi communities in Salah ad Din Province to maintain public services. At its peak I had 3,000 employees. Sure, plenty of it got stolen, but the work did get done and it was done transparently and through the Iraqi ministries and local governments. The insurgency still blossomed bloodily.

Boys watch a grader at work in a town in Salah ad Din Province, Iraq. These boys are all fighting age now.

Marrying Bryce and Casey. May 2011.

With First Sergeant Scott Miller in a makeshift company headquarters in Haditha, Iraq, Fall/Winter 2006. No better friend, no better counsel than 1stSgt Miller. Semper Fidelis Scott.

Speaking with Lauren Lyster of RT News. I would not drink before doing media, but would almost always spend the rest of the afternoon and evening making friends with the pain in my head via alcohol. Washington, DC. Summer, 2010

Through the end of 2004 until I left Tikrit at the end of May 2005, smoke clouds from the oil fires of Bayji were near daily.

My first and, only, boss, Chuck, in Tirkit, posing in front of an armored Humvee on FOB Danger. The rumor was that that vehicle had belonged to Michael Jackson. I don’t know if that is true, but what is true is that the US government and its allies were incredibly unprepared for the war in Iraq. Over a year of believing it would get better in Iraq by politicians, bureaucrats and generals finally evaporated and in 2004 the US government purchased and requisitioned armored vehicles across the world to protect its people in Iraq. If I recall right this vehicle was delivered without the keys. Eventually KBR came and took it away.

With the incomparable Ray McGovern and two very bad ass ladies from Code Pink, Asheville, NC, July 2014.

My home and office. FOB Danger, Tikrit, Iraq, 2004-5.

With Daniel Ellsberg in LA. November 2009.

My friend’s patio in Maui. The kindness of friends has saved me.

RIP Danny.

Speaking as an alum at Tufts University, April 2011.

An aerial view of the Presidential palace in the Baghdad. It would serve as headquarters for the US Coalition Provisional Authority and then the US Embassy in Iraq.

Our house staff in Tikrit, Iraq. Mostly Shia and Kurds, what happened to them, particularly the women, haunts me and is a root cause of my PTSD and moral injury.

A young Iraqi digs a ditch in Salah ad Din province in 2004 or 2005.

Visiting Julian Assange in London in November 2014.

First Lieutenant Hoh with North Korea behind him in the winter of 2001.

Speaking at the Carr Center at Harvard University in November 2010. Yeah, that fish I caught was that big…

A market we drove by. We rarely, if ever, stopped at such places, none of us wanted to kill their business by scaring away the customers. Also, it wasn’t very safe for us.

A visit from an American and British delegation from Kabul. Qalat, Zabul Province, Southeastern Afghanistan, Summer 2009.

Meticulously researched and documented. One of the first books I suggest to anyone who is looking to understand the wars we are in.

Heading through a checkpoint in 2004.

Iraqi police move past us in October 2004. Riding 7 or 8 to an unarmored pick up truck these men were easily killed by insurgents. By 2005 the insurgents had begun placing canisters of fuel on the IEDs to create a fire ball to burn those hit in open vehicles and to scare those in the vicinity.

A medevac following a successful IED attack against American forces in between Tikrit and Kirkuk, 2005.

My favorite interview. From the Spanish newspaper La Pais. In it the correspondent refers to me as burly and affable. We did the interview in one of my local bars, I’m pretty sure the correspondent kindly substituted burly and affable for fat and drunk.

Steel from the World Trade Center at my father’s old church, the Church of the Good Shepard in Inman, Manhattan, January 2013.

Welcome to Samarra. October, 2004.

With my friend, General Abdullah. He wouldn’t wear the glasses because he didn’t want his enemies to see him in them. His enemies executed him in April 2011.

Iraqi kids giving us thumbs up and hoping for candy as we drive to Baquba. I’m not sure if these were Sunni or Shia children, but regardless, I can’t imagine they would be so friendly today.

What it looks like when some foreign ambassadors and generals visit your city. October 2004

Bryan and I with our largest single pay day. $3.3 million dollars. I was 31 years old, a Department of Defense civilian employee and a captain in the US Marine Corps Inactive Reserve.

We believed that if we showed progress to the Iraqi people, that if we delivered services, got the government working again, made their communities nicer and modern, that the people, including tribal leaders, would forget the occupation, acquiesce to usurpation, allow traditional rivals to profit, forgive our atrocities and mistakes, and not respond to the fear brought by jihadists. We were fools.

With Contessa Brewer on MSNBC in December 2010.

What it looks like when a rocket strikes next to your office. Our office was the second window on the left, close to the impact point. No one was hurt. I was eating downstairs in the chow hall, but Rita, our Christian-Iraqi secretary was in the office at the time. Whoever applied the mylar coating that prevented the window from becoming shrapnel saved Rita’s life. Baghdad, May 2004.

At Jalalabad Airbase in northeastern Afghanistan, Spring 2009. An old Soviet warplane lays broken, placed upon American HESCO, while nearby are the steps where Osama bin Laden announced his arrival in Afghanistan and declared continued war against the US. Bin Laden made that statement several months before the Taliban conquered this area; the Taliban effectively inherited bin Laden. Meanwhile, the man who actually brought bin Laden to Afghanistan, Abdul Rasoul Sayaf is today a prominent member of the Afghan Parliament who has run as a candidate for President. He actually won Kandahar Province in voting in 2014.

Damn right Snoopy.

It reads, in English letters over the Arabic, of course: “The United States Army in partnership with the Iraqi people for a better future.” I don’t believe that sign is still standing…

Pay day in Tikrit. We worked in cash. Things did get built and the money bought influence, but building things does not bring justice and influence is not loyalty. The insurgency got stronger. Note the black plastic bag, most of our contractors would walk out the gate of FOB Danger into Tikrit, with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in those black plastic bags, nearly the same time, every week. I never heard once of one of them getting robbed…

Christmas morning, 2004. General Abdullah, the deputy governor, and Sheik Naji, the Tribal Council leader, brought us the tree. They are both dead.

At the Marine Corps Ball with my company staff after my second Iraq Deployment. Finer men I’ve never known.

Speaking with my operations chief, Master Sergeant Kent Samuels, the best Marine I ever served with, on a clear and beautiful December day in Iraq. Two of my Marines would be severely wounded just hours after this photo.

The hardest thing of war: trying to be moral in the immoral world of war.

With my friend, hero and inspiration, Shea Brown at the 2013 Ridenhour Awards.

Afghan men greet us as we approach a school. Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

Two of my best friends to this day. Suzanne and Ryan. FOB Danger, Tikirt, Iraq, December 2004.

My friend Erica running the Marine Corps Marathon in 2008 with the name of my radio operator on her back.

While the rest of Iraq burned we had a pretty excellent pool party at CPA headquarters in Baghdad. Memorial Day, 2004.

A Bradley stands guard at one of our gates. I once saw an insurgent RPG team attack a Bradley at a checkpoint in daylight. The Bradely’s coaxial machine gun killed them very quickly. I watched it happen with a cup of coffee in my hand.

As a guest at a Bahai summer retreat in FL in July 2015. Although I am an atheist 6 1/2 days of the week it doesn’t mean I stop exploring, stop questioning, stop seeking and stop trying to understand. Isn’t that photo dramatic? ;)

Letting go is not forgetting.

Staff Sergeant Lange briefs his Marines before a patrol to find IEDs on a cold winter day in Haditha, Iraq. I love everyone of those kids. 2006

Getting ready to fly out. I was involved in a deadly helicopter crash in 2006, after that, whenever I flew, I was always one of the last to board and first to get off. Zabul Province, Afghanistan, Summer 2009.

With Karzan at a meeting of generals and governors in Sulimania, Kurdistan, Iraq, April 2005. Note the photo of Talabani and the Kurdish flag.

Gus. RIP my friend.

One of my tattoos. Originally the design was something my friend and engineer in Iraq, Ammar, and I came up with. Based on the idea, in 2004, that we were rebuilding the country. For my tattoo, a decade later, I replaced one of the shovels with an ax and added a drop of blood. It’s more honest that way.

My good friend’s brother’s grave in Arlington.

Teaching soldiers and civilians how we were doing governance and reconstruction operations in 1st Infantry Division’s AO in 2004. We were a model of success for the rest of Iraq, but the success was only on paper. Sure we built and repaired a lot, some of it competently (almost always when we worked through the Iraqi ministry and not Western contractors), but as we spent millions of dollars per week, worked to ensure elections would occur and to create an Iraqi government, the insurgency gained in strength every week.

Share this please.

We drive past a lone Iraqi policeman at his checkpoint. When an Iraqi police man or soldier was posted in the middle of the road, by themselves, we would refer to those positions as suicide posts. Here the Iraqi policeman is not wearing a mask or baclava indicating the area was somewhat controlled and sympathetic to Iraqi government and coalition forces.

Two Iraqi women walk along the Euphrates River in Anbar Province in 2006 or 2007. For most of our time in Anbar this was as close as many civilians would come to us.

Throughout the wars it was forbidden to have an American flag on our vehicles. The reason: because it would make the local people feel occupied. As if that heavy machine gun wasn’t enough to make them feel occupied…

Bradleys and a concrete box to hide in from mortar and rocket fire near the ancient Malawiya temple in Samara.

I wrote a short post on this photo earlier this year: https://matthewhoh.com/2015/02/27/smoke-from-bayji/

In Kunar Province in northeastern Afghanistan a US army captain explains the area to me. Spring 2009. At this point, the US Army was spending $100 million on construction and development projects in this part of the country (the four provinces of Nangahar, Nuristan, Kunar and Laghman, known collectively as N2KL), while USAID was spending an additional $100 million. There was nearly zero coordination between the the two organizations, although representatives on the ground did try and work through issues on a personal level. However, at regional command, Jalalabad, where there was no USAID presence, national command, Kabul, and strategic command, Washington, DC, there was no cooperation between these two organizations that were spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars in this region and billions nationally. The lack of results was to be expected, not just in achieving success on the project level, but success in terms of winning the war. By the way, the fact that I am wearing a blazer, khaki pants and drinking a Sprite, while she has two weapons, is not lost on me.

The Australians remember that war destroys not just the bodies and soul of men, but animals as well. Bless the Australians for such a remembrance. Melbourne, Australia, 2012.

Sadr City in the spring of 2004. Well over a year after our occupation had begun this was the reality of the streets of Baghdad. A reality very distant from the conversations at the Embassy and in Washington.

I can go on for a very long time about Batman. A man challenged by his own society who destroys all around him in a quest for justice and vengeance, slaughtering his soul in a Sisyphean task of trying to reform the past and atone for his own inaction and culpability. Batman, like our desire for a just world, accountability and vengeance, is a heartbreaking tale of self destruction. At its worst it will manifest as a tragic self-immolation of our lives, our minds and our souls, and those belonging to our friends and family, at best it is Adam West riding a miniature elephant.

Don’t ever say our occupation wasn’t classy….

Paying villagers in Zabul Province, Afghanistan for the death of villagers by our Apache helicopters. August 2009. I’m standing, in the blue shirt.

Orange soda and snacks.

A market in Sadr City in either 2004 or 2005.

By all means, let’s make sure we have clean water to swim in. The Iraqis can wait. Also, why won’t the Iraqis just learn English already??? Green Zone, Baghdad, Spring 2004.

Contractors inside the Horsegate, September, 2004, Tikrit, Iraq. They are waiting to be paid, in cash, in amounts varying between a few thousand dollars and millions. This occurred weekly.

Tacos and the beach. Do things like this. Live, try and live, it’s all you can do. You know too many who can’t even do that anymore.

Prior to the Marines’ assault on Fallujah in November 2004, we conducted a campaign against Samarra in October. A shaping operation, the intent was to disrupt insurgent networks prior to the battle in Fallujah, while denying sanctuary to insurgents who would attempt to escape Fallujah. Here a column of fuel tankers awaits entry into Samarra. We did a massive Phase IV post combat reconstruction effort in Samarra intended to connect the local people to their government and convince to support us and not the insurgents. It didn’t work.

My friend Bryan with the Golden Dome mosque of Samarra behind him. Al-Qaeda would destroy the mosque, an important Shia pilgrimage and heritage site, in February 2006.

The 1st Infantry Division Headquarters in Tikrit, Iraq. Named FOB Danger, we were housed in an extremely large compound built by the Baath Party in Tikrit, Iraq. With dozens of palaces and villas, manmade lakes and waterfalls, and a zoo, it was an absurdist realization of a fever dream combining Disneyworld, Las Vegas, and the sets of Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra. The division headquarters, pictured here, was located on the cliff overlooking the Tirgis River where, according to legend, the great Muslim general Salahaddin was born. By the time I left we had a trailer selling Subway sandwiches, a coffee shop where Bangladeshi workers would make you a cappuccino and Zumba classes.

Hello from Oslo. November 2014. Working with fellow activists, many of them courageous and lawbreaking whistleblowers, from four other countries.

We often need to be refreshed. Rumi. 13th century.

My friend Durga. Baghdad 2004. We became friends after I let him use my computer to email his family back in Nepal. Kindness has its rewards. Durga was the Nepalese guard company quarter master. I never suffered without whenever I was in Baghdad after that.

Love and joy. Lost through war and PTSD, renewed through dogs.

I have a fantasy, I have always had it, of walking cross country. With PTSD it becomes a fantasy of escape, and, every now and again, I contemplate it. But I know it is just a means for me to try to run, to try to avoid and that, at some point, it would have to end. When does it end?

The Horsegate, Forward Operating Base Danger, Tikrit, Iraq. 2004/5 Supposedly Saddam’s carriage, pulled by the most beauteous white horses would enter and leave through here. I taught my friend Mazin how to drive in that parking lot.

On the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the summer of 2009. Honestly, I might even have been in Pakistan.

JFK memorial in Melbourne, Australia. It’s nice to be overseas and see a monument to the United States representative of something other than fast food.

Bob Herbert’s column of July 9, 2009 had a very deep effect on me when I read it in Zabul Province, Afghanistan that summer. It was an honor to be included in his book.

Afghan elders await a session with Americans and Afghans from Kabul to begin in the summer of 2009. Zabul Province, Afghanistan.

Speaking at the dedication of the Expose Facts’ Daniel Ellsberg billboard outside the US State Department in May 2014.

Young boys and girls in a school in Salah ad Din province in Iraq in 2004 or 2005. Sunni kids. How many are fighting for the Islamic State now?

Iraqi boys wave for the cameras. Taken over a decade ago these boys are young men now. If they have survived, if they are not refugees…I wonder about them. These were Sunni boys. Do they fight for the Islamic State? Most assuredly I believe they do. Our simple and chauvanistic tales and narratives of Manichean sides of good and evil do not withstand such knowledge of the Islamic State’s fighters as joyful youths. These boys weren’t made evil by their people, their faith, their culture, but rather by over a decade of war, suffering, hate, desperation and fear.

With Jess Radack, Tom Drake and Peter van Buren at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. If you don’t know who these folks are, how brave they are and how they have taken on the worst in our government, please google them.

As CPA transitioned to the US Embassy in the spring of 2004 I went north from Baghdad to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home city. Incoming (civilian) and outgoing (mostly military) members of the reconstruction and governance team in Salah ad Din province.

Somewhere some poor bastard has it worse than you. A Marine burns shit in Haditha, Iraq, December 2006.

As a member of the Secretary of the Navy’s office in the summer of 2003.

How I traveled. An armored Land Crusier, my cup of coffee and my trusty AK-47. I’d wear body armor, and if wearing a suit, would put my jacket over the body armor. I’d rarely wear a helmet and I would often have a small pistol in my front right pants pocket with an extra magazine in my left pocket. Sometimes, but not always, I’d have a bag of cash. My program was $50 million dollars. The most I ever had in my possession at one time was $26 million which I kept in my bedroom in two safes.

Dogs in Russia. The basic elements of life, including compassion and suffering, are not restricted by geographical borders or species.

Conducting post combat reconstruction operations in Samarra, October 2004. I had several hundred thousands of dollars in cash, plus several million dollars in contracts to award and restart. The army partnered with the Iraqi ministries to rebuild and renew services to the people. It was classic COIN and it didn’t work. This was over two years prior to General Petraeus and his COINdinistas arriving in Iraq to “win” the war. General Petraeus was in Iraq at this point, leading a failed effort to train Iraqi security forces, allowing open sectarian dominance in those security forces, and losing hundreds of thousands of weapons and millions of pounds of ammunition; all while penning op-eds for the Washington Post, informing Americans how well the war was going in Iraq and not so subtly encouraging them to vote Bush-Cheney in 04.

Tora Bora seen from Jalalabad Airfield in Spring 2005, Northeastern Afghanistan. These were the mountains that bin Laden and his few remaining allies escaped to in 2001. From here he escaped into Pakistan. When I took this photo in 2009 I thought what would have happened if we had got bin Laden in 2001. If we had captured or killed him in those mountains. How different would history be, how different our lives, how many lives would not be devolving in the ground, how many dreams and promises to love ones would have been kept? Over four years after killing bin Laden our wars continue. The same would have occurred in 2001. We were a nation bent on war and once entered into war, by petty men and women devoid of worldly, historical, cultural and religious knowledge, but conditioned to obey the campaign dollars and the public opinion polls., We always surrender our options and free will to the gods of war. The Romans and the Greeks named forces outside of human control as gods. Chief among the gods were Mars (Rome) and Ares (Greece). Such a god still exists as war, a force beyond human manipulation, control or understanding. Ask the dead in Paris, Beirut, the Sinai, Raqaa, Baghdad and Kabul if they disagree.

As if out of central casting, an Afghan village elder hears our latest take on a war he has lived through since the 1970s. Zabul Province, August 2009

Memorial Day party at CPA headquarters, Baghdad, Iraq, May 2004. I had been in Iraq for a few weeks at this point. While Baghdad was hit daily with car bombs we drank Amstel Light.

It’s hard to forget such a face. And with remembering comes wondering.

One of the many palaces and villas built by the Baath Party in Tikrit, Iraq.

A guard stirs the tea he made for me with the cleaning rod from his rifle. Qalat, Zabul Province, Southern Afghanistan, May 2009

My movement from Baghdad to Tikrit in June 2004.

DVDs, all pirated, and some of them porn. As the car bombs were rocking Baghdad and Sunni and Shia uprisings were shaking nearly every city, in spring 2004 I heard CPA senior advisors at a meeting discuss the prevalence of pirated DVDs and the need to respect the interests of Jack Valenti and the motion picture industry. I’m serious. Jerry Bremer could have been Moses, Abe Lincoln and Gandhi rolled into one and he still would have been a failure in Baghdad because of those who populated the CPA.

With my good friend Pete Dominick. Pete I hope you know how much your friendship means to me.

Young Shia boys gather outside their homes in Sadr City, Baghdad in 2004 or 2005. By now these boys are old enough to fill out the ranks of the Shia militias or the Shia dominated Iraqi Army. That is if they were lucky enough to survive the last decade. A decade that has seen nearly one million Iraqi deaths.

Speaking to an American financed Afghan television program are three Americans and one Romanian, translated by an Afghan though. We are telling the Afghan people why it is important for them to vote. August 2009.

When the ambassador shows up in your city you meet him at the landing zone with your corrupt governor, your non Pashto speaking army commander, and your KHAD (communist) trained intelligence chief.

With my good friend Jared. Jared’s sharing of his experiences going through some tough times was of unbelievable help to me as I began my recovery. Thank you Jared. Peace brother.

My friend. I don’t know if he is alive or dead. He liked my ties and kept his pistol in that man-purse.

Commemorating the compassion of a man and his donkey amidst the slaughter, suffering, insanity, and the profound and mean stupidity of the Gallipoli campaign in 2015. Melbourne, Australia.

At the announcement of the Afghanistan Study Group in September 2010 in Washington, DC.

With my good friend and liberty mate Scott Macintyre at Camp Fuji, Japan the winter of 2000.

Brits, Americans and one Iraqi, late summer 2004, enjoying some local Iraqi cuisine.

Heavy equipment from my engineer task force getting ready to drop and berm a city in western Anbar Province, Iraq in November 2006. My task force was composed of nearly 300 Marines, Sailors and Soldiers and 100 pieces of rolling equipment, including nearly 50 pieces of engineer equipment. I was later told I had commanded the largest Marine Corps engineer operation of the Iraq War. Within a few years I would not be able to hold a job for more than a few months at a time.

At an outdoor restaurant in the Green Zone. By 2004 Western staffers were unable to leave the Green Zone, safely, without armed escort, and going to dinner in one of Baghdad’s many restaurants was impossible. Rocket and mortar fire were common in Baghdad, so wearing body armor during a dinner out, in one of the restaurants and bars that existed within the confines of the Green Zone, was often seen as a minor inconvenience.

Speaking at a Washington, DC showing of Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars in May 2013.

With Dylan Ratigan on MSNBC in December 2011 discussing the removal of the American forces from Iraq. My anger was at its peak. I remember struggling to maintain my composure as I asked Dylan who would be held responsible for the war, when we as a people would have the courage to face the wrongs, honor the dead and take on the villains. At this point breakdowns were occurring daily, my relationship was in pieces and the numbing narcosis of alcohol was the only thing keeping me alive.

Drinking and eating at the Green Zone Cafe in Baghdad in September 2004, obviously before the suicide bomber hit it.

Marrying my friends Dan and Marsha May 2013 in Maryland. Dan, a Naval officer, would shortly deploy. I can’t say I am prouder of anything more than the Marines I led in Iraq, but in terms of the best things I have done in my life, marrying my friends Dan and Marsha, and Bryce and Casey, are it.

That’s the capitalist spirit Kurdistan! Sulamania, Iraq, 2005.

My route clearance team. Anbar Province, Iraq, 2007. Their job was to drive the roads looking for IEDs. The two burst bombs on the side of the Buffalo indicate that the Buffalo was hit twice, I believe it was hit again after this photo. Other vehicles were hit far more often. I don’t believe any of these Marines were screened for traumatic brain injuries upon our return to the US even though some of them were in at least 7 or 8 IED strikes on their vehicles. I believe I personally was in about 10 convoys and patrols that were hit with IEDs, although, somehow, my vehicle was never hit, just those in front and behind me. Whether that was due to Fortune or dumb luck I don’t know. Not to be outdone, the other Marines in my company searched for IEDs and weapons caches with handheld mine detectors on foot. All of us, on multiple occasions, would dismount our vehicles and walk on foot in front of the vehicles looking for mines and IEDs, at night we would do it with flashlights.

With my good friend Pat, a former Army Ranger. This was the night before I made my first attempt at sobriety. The bar at the top of the W Hotel in Washington, DC overlooking the Treasury Building and the White House, January 31, 2012. The next day I would appear on Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC afraid I would vomit on the set and desperate for an end to it all. Knowing hundreds of thousands of people were watching I decided I couldn’t take my own life and going on as I was was just too painful. I’m still alive.

In Norway.

Malaysia in 2001 with Frank, Bez and some Malaysian paratrooper friends. We got to go places that rich people pay thousands and thousands of dollars to visit.

Sulamania in Kurdistan. Unlike the rest of Iraq is so, so many ways.

When I started speaking publicly against the Afghan War, nearly five years before this interview, I couldn’t have imagined we would be debating war in Iraq again. September, 2014

Visiting Samarra to inspect post-combat reconstruction efforts, either October or November 2004. Note the camera in my left hand. Myself, US Army and Iraqi engineers would diligently photograph our work to document progress, account for expenditures, and illustrate/illuminate a victory narrative for the American command in Baghdad and politicians in Washington, DC. Of course, pictures will not explain the fear, anger and desperation of a people that feel usurped, occupied, displaced and living under existential threat from foreigners, religious extremists, and rivals within their own society, such as the Shia dominated government.

My friend Bryan and a translator confer with a local Iraqi as we conduct post-combat reconstruction efforts in Samarra, a city, 11 years later, that is still a bloody battleground. The man in the suit is dead. The man next to him was once kidnapped and threatened with beheading. Bryan and I had decided to use money we controlled to ransom him, however he was released. Whether he was actually kidnapped is something I could never completely determine, such were the alliances and personalities that existed in the midst of guerrilla and civil war, corruption, and collapse. The boy with the soccer ball…he would be in his twenties now, is he alive, a refugee, an amputee? PTSD, nightmare, depression, chronic health problems most definitely. Does he fight for the Islamic State now out of necessity, survival, hatred, faith…I don’t know, but I would guess, yes, it is very possible he does.

Our single largest one time payout was $1.16 million in October, 2004. Our man calmly put it his briefcase and walked out into Tikrit.

Thanksgiving aboard FOB Danger, November 2004.

The middle of the day sometime in 2005 in Tikrit. Smoke from the constant oil pipeline fires. In the spring the insurgents would seemingly detonate a pipeline nearly every morning, so much that the detonation, from over 20km away, would often serve as my alarm clock.

Paul Bremer transitions the Iraqi Ministry of Youth and Sport to Iraqi control in June 2004. The various ministries had been divvied up to various Iraqi political groups. In this case, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) whose militia, the Badr Corps, fought against many of my friends. With Bremer’s transfer of the ministry went nearly $20 million in cash, directly to SCIRI. $20 million bought a lot of AKs, RPGs and explosives in the summer of 2004…

Courage can be contagious.

War Resisters League. Photo from a Vice News interview I did while in London in November 2014.

At the Sulimania Palace Hotel in Kurdistan, January 2005 with my Kurdish engineer and friend Karzan. The Palace Hotel in Kurdistan was a mainstay for Westerners and foreigners in Sulimania. Able to drink beer in the hotel restaurant, use wi-fi and watch Seinfeld (subtitled in Kurdish) the dissonance in the realities of Iraq could be overwhelming. The Palace was the scene of a modern Great Game, with Americans, Brits, Russians, Turks, Chinese, Koreans and others filling the rooms. Many of them were oil and gas representatives, others were intelligence officers, and some were both.

The majority of Marines and Sailors I led waiting for the flight to take us home at Al Asad Airbase, Anbar Province, Iraq. About 20 of my Marines and Sailors had to remain in Anbar for a few extra weeks. That still bothers me. April 2007.